Episode 7

Commander Ghent entered the bridge through the rear blast doors and started down the command walkway to the front. Captain Gandala and Agent Bastra were already there. Commander Ghent looked haggard with some mix of fatigue, a hangover, and shame.

Captain Gandala was the first to greet him. “Right on time, Commander. I trust that you found some relaxation during the first watch.”

Bastra gave Ghent a knowing smile. He looked down at the floor.

“Ready for duty, Ma’am.” Ghent replied.

“Ma’am, we’re half an hour out of the Pasaana system.” Lt. Cmdr. Kyral called out. “Distress calls from ships nearby. It’s the Pasaana Governor.”

“Drop us out of hyper speed to make a rendezvous. Put the governor on at the holotable.”

The swirling blue of hyperspace shifted into streaking lines and then stars. A cluster of shuttles was gathered around a light ship. All had significant damage and looked like they were barely holding together.

“There they are, Ma’am.” Kyral said. “Gozanti cruiser. 8 Lambda shuttles. 12 older shuttles and orbital craft. Transponder shows it’s all from the local garrison. The Gozanti is responding to our hail.”

The governor showed up in blue at the holotable and gave a quick salute to Gandala.

“I’m glad you could finally make it, Captain” he began. “We’ve spent nearly a two days under siege before I had to retreat from the planet. Now that you’re here we’ll set everything straight and get this sector back in order. These ships took heavy damage in the evacuation. We’ll be landing right away.”

The governor cut out before Gandala even had a chance to respond.

Lt. Cmdr. Kyral looked at the Captain. “Even more pompous than the Baron.”

Gandala looked squarely at her. “We never embarked any Baron, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Uh... right, Ma’am. Right. I’ll... go inform hanger deck about the arrivals.”

“Uhh, Captain?” A voice came from one of the data pits. “We’re close enough to Pasaana now to get some clear sensor readings. You need to see this.”

Captain Gandala walked along the raised walkway and Commander Ghent took the steps into the data pit to see the readout closely.

“What the hell?” Ghent said, surprised at the screen. “There’s still ground fighting. Plenty of it. Looks like near a thousand stormtroopers down there.”

Gandala looked disgusted. “He’s abandoned his troopers, the coward. He’s letting the rabble embarrass the Empire. Let’s get down to the hanger and figure out what’s all happening here. Lt. Cmdr. Kyral, you have the conn. Once we’ve loaded up the ships here continue to Pasaana.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

A few minutes later, the hanger chief was on Gandala the moment she got through the door to the hanger deck.

“Ma’am, there’s no room for all of this. We left Kashyyyk with a full complement. We already have one cruiser and we can hold a second in the main part of the bay. We can’t take on all these shuttles without jamming the deck completely. They’re all beaten to garbage and it’ll drive my crew bonkers to try to fix this crap.”

Gandala sighed. “It’s less than an hour to Pasaana. It will all be going back to the surface in the same condition it arrive here. And if it can’t make it back to the surface, space it when we get in system. We’re only here to load supplies and get out.”

“Load supplies?!” The governor yelled as he approached. Apparently he had already made it off of the cruiser. “You’re here to put down this uprising. And you’re not re-establishing order in this sector then I expect transit to the Moff’s centre in Bothawui. In either case, riots destroyed my home on Pasaana. The admiral’s suite on a Star Destroyer is legendary and I’ll be glad to have your hospitality for the next few days while we get the locals here organized.”

Gandala, as always, had Ghent on her right and Bastra on her left. She looked first to Bastra. The agent shook her head subtly. Her team hadn’t yet cleared the admiral’s suite of evidence the previous nights skullduggery. Next she turned to Ghent.

“How much time do we have, Commander?”

“Ma’am,” Ghent replied, “If we’re going to make the 7th fleet rally point in Felucia on time we’ll have about 9 hours in orbit. It’ll be double-time on supply teams to get all the bacta loaded in that window, let alone any time spent securing access to what we’re after.”

“Felucia?!” The governor replied. “I called for assistance with an uprising. That’s what you’re here to do and you’ll do it for as long as necessary to stabilize Pasaana.”

Gandala was straining to keep suffering the governor’s attitude and requests. She hated him for indulging the rebellion almost as much as she hated the rebels themselves.

“Governor,” Gandala said coldly, “the best quarters are reserved for those who do not abandon their posts. I would prefer to court martial you but these are complicated circumstances and we’re operating on a schedule. You’ll won’t be staying with us. You’ll observe us stabilize your planet. You’ll observe us requisition every drop of bacta we can carry. You’ll observe us leave. And you’ll observe it all from a shuttle. I’m requisitioning your cruiser to help move bacta.”

“This is an outrage!”

“Abandoning your soldiers is an outrage. If you’d prefer, I can have you shot and we’ll forget this conversation happened.”

Gandala turned and walked away from the governor while he was shouting at her. “Hanger chief, get our new cruiser organized. You have half an hour to get it ready for steady cargo runs. We’ll be loading bacta off the surface. We’ll need both hangers running at top efficiency to get as much as possible. Also, get the hanger sergeant to cram the governor into a shuttle and shut him up.”

Commander Ghent tucked away his personal holopad and looked up at Gandala. “Captain, Lt. Fenik has the situation briefing ready. I can call the Colonel and the Flight Major for the operational run through on the bridge.”

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“Thank you, Commander. Have the hanger sergeant grab somebody competent from the governor’s party for local intel. Let’s get back up there.”

The three of them left the hanger and were shortly in an elevator moving toward the bridge.

“Captain,” Bastra started, “if we aren’t staying long enough to stabilize the planet and we’re not giving transit, what happens to the governor?”

“I’d prefer a trial and execution but given the urgency of our circumstances, that will all have to wait. The troopers he’s abandoned deserve better.”

Bastra shrugged. “Those shuttles are in rough shape. They might not make it back into the atmosphere...”

“No”, Ghent cut in. “The planet and the garrison won’t be much better without him. Let him go for now and justice will come once the current uprisings pass.”

“I’m with the Commander”, Gandala said. “A coward deserves humiliation. Quietly disappearing is too good for him.”

A few minutes later the command staff were gathered around the holotable in the conference room off the bridge. Gandala, Ghent, and Bastra were joined by Colonel Vucora, Flight Major Tafo, and Lt. Fenik. A grey analysis droid, RA-112, joined them. The droid was patterned after the standard look of protocol droids. Last to arrive was a local official from the governor, escorted onto the bridge by a stormtrooper.

“20 minutes out from Pasaana System, Captain.” A voice came from one of the data pits.

Gandala nodded at Lt. Fenik to start his briefing.

“Ok. Operational priority is loading bacta from Pasaana for transport to 7th Fleet. Secondary objectives are stabilizing riots and re-establishing control. Timetable to meet with the fleet gives us about 9 hours in orbit.”

Fenik tapped part of the table and an image of a city appeared. He continued, “Pasaana city. Roughly 1.5 million residents. Original garrison was two thousand stormtroopers and supporting crew. The refinery is on the north outskirts of the city here. Riots are more focused on the city centre. We could land a heavy force at the outskirts of the city and move in to seize the refinery quite easily. Deploying troopers in the city centre to dispel the uprising will be more complicated without a decent landing zone.”

“Easy hot drop.” Vucora cut in. “We can’t get anything heavy into the city centre but we can put boots down and TIE support will offset the lack of armour.”

“Priority is the Bacta. Let’s solve that first.” Gandala replied. “How much bacta can we expect?”

After a pause, the trooper gave the local official a nudge.

“Uh... there’s a transport convoy that comes every few weeks. They usually load around 60,000 tonnes. The next one is due in four days.”

“RA-112, how much room do we have and how much can we load within timetable?” Gandala asked.

The droid piped up. “Current available space would accommodate 21,506 tonnes of bacta in standard storage arrangements. With two light cruisers we could achieve 24,723 tonnes of cargo throughput from surface to orbit.

“We’re loading all 60,000” Gandala replied. “Solutions?”

“The only way we’ll take on more cargo is leaving things behind.” Ghent said. “Dropping off stormtroopers for an stronger garrison would help the locals but won’t free up usable space fast enough. Cramming bacta containers into a barracks can’t really be done with the speed or scale we’re looking at.”

“The least essential thing about right now is food.” Lt. Fenik said. “We’re carrying over a years worth of nutrient slurry. We drop it off on the surface and replace it with bacta to make up the extra space. I’m not sure what the local garrison will do with it but it’s better than just spacing it.”

“RA-112, how much food would we have to offload to make up the space?” Gandala asked.

“Nutrient slurry is 93% of the density of bacta. Accommodating an additional 40,000 tonnes of bacta would drop our food stores from a 13 monthly supply to a 5 month supply. Imperial navy protocols recommend keeping a 9 month minimum to maintain operational flexibility.”

“Noted.” Gandala replied. “We’ll drop the food and resupply later. That gives us the space. Hanger staff and operations can move cargo in and out of the holds at the needed pace but it would require two shifts of deck hands. Getting it all aboard Doomhammer from the surface is the next bottleneck. We have more support craft than the cruisers. Other solutions?”

“Any ships that are moving bacta aren’t available for moving troopers.” Colonel Vucora said. “We can pull in more of the support craft to move bacta but that will gives us fewer and fewer options for moving troopers to the surface or any redeploying after arrival.”

“That will also jam the hangers.” Flight Major Tafo added. “If we have constant traffic from supply ships it will make delays when the CAP rotates and it’ll all be shot to hell if we need to scramble.”

“Those are operational constraints we may have to accept to maintain priorities.” Ghent responded. “RA-112, with all of the support craft engaged in moving supplies, how much bacta could we load?”

The droids eyes started to blink. “Calculating cargo volume of all secondary craft. Estimating loading times. Estimating travel times. Calculating... Using the entire support wing would yield 93% of requested supply throughput. We would require 1017 crew members on the ground for organization and loading.”

“Transporting a thousand people to the surface would hardly leave us with room for troopers.” Vucora replied.

“Troopers can move the bacta.” Gandala said. “And they can coerce local assistance through necessary means. Every ship launches with a load of troopers and is reloaded with bacta. Second load moves food down and reloads bacta back up.”

“If the hanger is fully occupied,” Tafo added, “Then our cap won’t be able to rotate. It’ll be a full nine hours for those pilots. I’ll tell them to pack a lunch and they can crap their flight suits. It won’t be the first time. We’ll launch triple the standard number so that they can keep a light rotation among themselves.”

“Good.” Gandala replied. “Commander Ghent, have a scan go through for local spaceports and see if there’s a light or medium freighter to supplement and get us over the top for all 60,000 tonnes. We’ll have to run the traffic control to keep things moving and it’ll be a double ration for hanger deck once they’re done with this.”

“And the secondary objective, Captain?” Lt. Fenik asked. “If all the ships and troopers are focused on the bacta, what happens with the ongoing uprising?”

“We’ll support them through orbital bombardment.” Gandala replied.

“Captain,” Vucora cautioned, “those are likely very close contact fights and asymmetric lines. It’ll be impossible to bombard closely enough to adequately support the troops.”

“We’ll won’t shoot near the troops. Lt. Fenik, have the gunnery chief draw up a bombardment plan to roll over the entire city, starting with the outlying neighbourhoods and working inward. They’ll likely surrender after a suburb or two are gone and do anything to help us get on our way. Hopefully the governor will have a chance to compose himself before we leave the system. There’s our plan. Everybody organize your sections. Dismissed.”

A few minutes later, Doomhammer dropped for hyper speed and pulled into orbit in Pasaana. Cruisers and support craft started streaming out of the hanger towards the surface.

“Captain, we’re being hailed from the surface.” Lt. Fenik said. “It looks like someone is in change and wants to negotiate.”

Gandala walked from the viewports and the front of the bridge to the holotable at the back when a blue holographic figure formed.

“Star Destroyer Doomhammer, I am Consul Tieg, provisional ruler of Pasaana. We’ve...”

“I don’t care what you’re calling yourself.” Gandala said tersely. “You’re a traitor leading traitors. I’m not negotiating and I have a schedule to keep. Every time you answer me with anything other than ‘yes’ I remove a neighbourhood from your city. Do you understand?”

“Captain, we want to live peacefully...”

“That was not a ‘yes’. Gunnery Chief, first target set. Fire when ready.”

The holographic image shook as a turbolaser volley landed in the city.

“This is outrageous,” He yelled, “even for an Imperial captain.”

“Still not a ‘yes’. Gunnery Chief, second target set.”

“Yes, yes, YES! Okay! What do you want?”

“Thank you, Mr. Tieg.” Gandala said. “Beyond simply laying down arms and surrendering, we’ll be loading up all the bacta from the refinery on the north of the city.”

“That bacta is the bedrock of our economy.” The Consul responded. “If you simply take what’s in storage it will impoverish us.”

“Again, not a yes. Gunnery Chief, third target set, follow schedule from there. The bacta means more to me than your rebellious lives. My ships are heading toward the surface. The lives of my crew are more important than your citizens and I’ll repay every loss ten thousand to one. Your time of resistance is over. Bombardments will continue until you begin to assist in loading bacta. We’ve calculated that it would take three hours to completely eradicate the city. Unless you’re planning on surrendering, I don’t want to hear from you. Doomhammer out.”